BBC NEWS wrote: A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre".

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."“ It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement ”

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

"The court first tried whether there was any question of breach of copyright by the file-sharing application and that has been proved, that the offence was committed.

"The court then moved on to look at those who acted as a team to operate the Pirate Bay file-sharing service, and the court found that they knew that material which was protected by copyright but continued to operate the service," he said.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson, told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

this is what a swede i know has to say:QUOTE(Spartan-343 @ Apr 17 2009, 07:06 AM) *So pirate bay's gone? sad.gif

No, not by a long shot. This was basic court... for all intents and purposes it might as well be the equivalent of CourtTV. The exact same thing would have happened if The Pirate Bay won, the MPAA/RIAA would have appealed. The court will be reheard by a real judge now in appeals court. Once again, if they don't win in appeals court.. they will appeal that court and take it to supreme court. The Pirate Bay is not on trial, the 4 people behind it are. The Pirate Bay servers are hidden all over the world in over 10 or more countries, and a handful of servers have been taken to a secret location that not even four on trial know where they are. So, pretty much, it's impossible to shut down The Pirate Bay.

The absolute worse case scenario is The Pirate Bay crew ends up doing a year in Swedish prison after supreme court.. which isn't that far from summer camp. You even have internet access and everything there. At this point it will take years for them to wade through the courts. They can drag this on for quite awhile.

and more:I know most of you have probably forgotten all about it, but the verdict was just announced and as expected all 4 members of The Pirate Bay were found guilty. Thats 30 million SEK and 1 year in prison for each. This was of course why the whole thing was called a "Spectrial" (or spectacle) it's all dance and show for the media and was an expected loss. According to Svd.se the verdict was unanimous and says that all four worked as a team, developed specialized search functions and are therefore guilty.The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments. At one point the judge was asked if he was concerned for his personal safety after handing down this decision. The judge said he hadn’t received any harassment and was quite surprised at the question. The judge says the tracker is what assisted the copyright which they helped design. (Mind you.. the judge threw out all defense concerning the tracker......).The defense then accused the judge of folding under political pressure rather than looking at the case. The defense has of course appealed all charges and will be taking this to the higher court to do it all over again. The reasons for appeal was the charges were way too high (they assumed each download was a lost sale and if it was a pre-release it got like a 12x multiplier or something ridiculous) on top of that... no one from the Pirate Bay actually resides in Sweden .. so.. yeah. It's the equivalent of me having a house you can go to in Mexico to get a map to illegal substances in Europe and getting charged for it in Europe... not going to work. Needless to say if the prosecution tries to pull half of the crap they did in this court at the higher up ones they will be thrown out in two seconds.

On a side note all together, Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology has bought the original The Pirate Bay server for $243. It will be displayed in a section of the museum dedicated to machines and inventions that have changed people’s lives.

Uhm, it's not done yet. It will be appealed. And laws might as well be changed until the next trial, Swedish Pirate Party is quickly gaining in popularity fast. I been a member since 2006-2007 or so... per member they're currently the 4th biggest political party. And isn't too far from being the 3rd biggest now...

TL;DR about my political opinions. I don't think IP laws should be abolished, but I defiantly think they should be changed. They're too focused on the "owner" (corporations), and not necessarily the "creator" (the artist) or the "greater good" (public domain). Some things, like "software patents" (amazon one-click thing comes to mind) doesn't do anything but encourage patent trolls and make it a hell for people in the IT field...

I'm moving this to the debate forum, since this is VERY political in nature.